Mental illnesses are diseases of the brain

For quite some time now, no one has doubted that mental health and mental illness are rooted in the brain. Speculative psychology is receding, giving way to neuroscientific psychology that seeks the causes of mental ailments in the brain and the solution or alleviation of serious illnesses such as schizophrenia or dementias that do not respond satisfactorily to it.Psychiatry, psychology and neurology are coming together again in many aspects of mental health and illness using current therapeutics. In no way does the so-called neurobiological model of mental health or illness close in on itself; on the contrary, it opens up to the environment. Medicine and especially psychiatry have not yet precisely defined the coordinates that allow us to locate, categorize and classify abnormal mental states. But we do know that the mind is not the immaterial soul but a system of cerebral processes that can be modified by certain medicines, words and gestures and in any case alleviate the sufferer, the sick person, that is to say, the one who suffers.

Autorentext

Médico. Ex-professor universitário da UBA e Unsa na Argentina. Obteve vários prémios académicos. Publicou 42 livros e mais de 400 trabalhos científicos e literários. Mestre em Gerontologia pela Universidade Autónoma de Madrid. Dedicado à neurogeriatria e à gerontologia.